Tag Archives: saturday night live

It’s been awhile since SNL had me doubled over laughing, but Aidy’s song had me in hysterics. “Who are the boomers? Oh, they had all the sex and they made all the music and they got all the jobs and they made all the money and they bought all the houses and now they’ll never die!”

They nailed each generation perfectly. Like Keenan, I’m Gen X, so I’ve already given up and now I’m just sitting on the sidelines and watching the world burn:

In a humanities course at Reed College in Oregon, a professor showed a class the infamous and hilarious “King Tut” sketch performed by Steve Martin in 1978 on Saturday Night Live.

I mean, if I’m a student I might protest that I’m being expected to borrow a shit ton of cash for a loan that I’ll never be able to pay back so I can watch a sketch that I could have just watched on YouTube myself for free, but that’s neither here nor there.

The students called this racist. How dare Steve Martin appropriate Egyptian culture? One student said that when a golden-faced King Tut pops out of his coffin to play a saxophone, this is the equivalent of “blackface.” Read more in the NY Post.

Sigh. When did kids become such squares?

Seriously. Has everyone under 35 lost their cognitive functions?

OK. Let me spell it out for you. THE POINT OF THE SKETCH WAS TO MAKE FUN OF THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF KING TUT’S LIFE AND EGYPTIAN CULTURE!

That was what Martin was doing, through humor. In the late 1970s, a famous King Tut exhibit toured museums throughout America. Martin starts the sketch saying he thinks its ridiculous that King Tut’s life has been reduced to “toys and trinkets” and that money is being made off the pharaoh’s life.

Then he breaks out into a hilarious, over the top song and dance number. Girls in Egyptian garb dance in the background. Martin is using humor to make a point. It’s as if the life of an ancient king has been turned into little more than a song and dance routine to entertain dopey tourists.

Goldenface? No one had a gold face. Tut was buried in a coffin made out of gold with a golden image of his face on it.

There’s just no critical thinking anymore. How can anyone with a brain watch this sketch and realize anything other than Martin was making fun of the idea of taking an ancient culture and exploiting it for cash? Ironically, if these kids would think for five minutes, they’d probably realize they and Martin agree on things.

As a comic book nerd, I really enjoyed this sketch. Participants in the Wayne Manor Thanksgiving food drive complain about how Batman is profiling them, constantly coming into their neighborhoods, breaking their jaws, zip lining them up 30 stories into the air by their underpants and leaving them hanging by gargoyles.

Excessive force, Batman. Excessive force. Gotta chill out, buddy.

Complaint – I love Leslie Jones but I wish she’d work a little more on her timing and delivery. I see this over and over with her sketches. She flubs lines and then it takes me out of the sketch and takes me a minute to get back in. She’s very funny, has a lot of talent and pretty much carried that Ghostbusters movie on her back, but I hope she’ll work on her live delivery a little more.

Observation – I think Beck Bennett might be a better Wayne than Affleck.

You know, I always had a question. What time does Saturday Night Live come on in the West Coast?

I never really knew. But now I assume it must have been taped live and shown live on the East Coast and then, what, they held it and showed it at 11:30 in the West Coast?

Is that what happened? I don’t even know. If you’re one of my 3.5 West Coast readers, fill me in on this.

I suppose the problem with that is then technically it’s not Saturday Night “Live” and also with social media being so prevalent, half the country is in on a joke for hours before the other half. If you’re on the West Coast, your East Coast buddies are talking about stuff you haven’t seen yet.

It’s like time travel! Freaky!

Anyway, Jimmy Fallon celebrated this momentous occasion with a song and dance number:

BQB with a complaint here. It seems lately that SNL has averaged like one show a month, if that. I haven’t sat down and figured out how long it is between shows, but it has been weeks since there has been a new one and that happens all the time.

WTF? It used to be that whenever a news story broke, you could go, “Oh, I bet SNL will have fun with that” but now by the time they do a new show the story is old news.

I’m not sure what the deal is. Maybe the actors are all working on movie deals, maybe everyone wants time off or something, I don’t know. All speculation on my part.

It just seems incredibly lame to me that they can’t do better than this. There should be a show every Saturday.

I’ve wondered if the Internet has had an impact on this. Perhaps people don’t stay up for SNL anymore because of it. However, for me, I watch SNL now more than ever because of the Internet. I just go right to YouTube and watch whatever sketches I want. I don’t know if that hurts their bottom line though I feel like there’s got to be some ad revenue even in posting sketches in the web. I like it because I don’t have to stay up late and can watch whatever I want and skip over whatever seems lame.

Just a complaint I’m putting out into the universe. A lot is happening in the world and SNL is missing out on it.